When we last left our sandwich, (he can't be considered a hero), he had
just screwed around with the pilot of a Cessna by conspiring to trick the
pilot into believing that he was spotting the load.  This was humorous as
Dan only had 28 jumps at the time.  Oh yeah, he is also totally blind as
well.

This being Dan's first four-way, and not having planned it very well, Dan
climbed out of the aircraft, waited for exactly one of the other three
jumpers to climb out, and then he left.  This did cause a bit of
consternation among the two jumpers still inside of the airplane at the
time.  One of whom never made it into the formation due to having left the
airplane feet first on her back in an attempt to get out in time.

I'll pick up the story from there.

So, I am in my first 3/4 of a four-way.  Nothing too exciting is
happening.  We are just holding on and smiling at each other.  At least I
was smiling.  The other two jumpers were probably frowning as I had blown
the exit and we were now a bit short on the spot.  We broke off and I
dumped.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

My radio guy was talking to me as if everything was hunky dory.  Never
said anything about possibly, maybe not, quite hitting the DZ exactly.
Nowadays I am aware of the telltale signs of a bad spot.  Things like
hearing my radio guy saying, "OK Dan, just hold it there." followed by
long periods of nothing followed again by "OK, looking good, just hold it
there."  Or the occasional paniced shrieking over the radio of, "LISTEN
TO ....!!".  And you know it's a bad spot when the radio man is saying,
"Dan, we kind of see canopies out there but you're too far away to tell
you apart."  And you are certainly aware that it was a bad spot when the
last thing you hear over the radio is, "Dan, you're at seventy five feet,
you're in the trees, good luck."

Getting back to the point here.  I am flying along under my canopy, like
absolutely nothing is wrong.  It is a beautiful evening.  There is no
wind.  It is nice and warm.  Everything is just spiffy.  Little do I know
of the drama unfolding on the ground.  This DZ has been open for a couple
of months by this point.  They've got a blind skydiver in the air and he
is about to disappear into the trees.  They are running through the fields
radio in hand trying to keep line of sight with said blind skydiver and
talking to him like nothing is wrong.  Unfortunately, at some point, a
hill got between them and myself and the radios stopped working.

Meanwhile, under canopy, I am still thinking that things are OK.  However,
it does seem like it's been a bit since my last radio communication.  The
radios are one way so I can't ask for anything.  I'm getting a little
nervous, "Come on man, talk to me."  Hmm, what is that sound?  Sounds like
... like .... crickets?  WOW!  I must be getting pretty ..... WHAM!!!!!

Those were, in fact, crickets.  What I mistook as typical, pleasant,
everyday cricket chirping, was actually crickets screaming, "LOOK OUT!
HE'S GOING TO LAND ON US!"  Which should have been my cue to flare.
However, being inexperienced at the art of cricket interpretation, I,
instead, flew my canopy at full flight into the ground.

My buddy had followed me down and had landed just ahead of me with his own
little scare.  We were both landing in a nice big clearing.  He looked
down at the tall grass in the clearing and noticed a fence post sticking
up through the grass.  He thought to himself, "Hmm, I'll just land over
there by that fence post".  You know the old adage, "where there is
smoke, there is fire"?  Well, it can be modified slightly to "where there
are fence posts, there are typically fences".  My buddy realized this
fact in time and was luckily able to pull off a decent landing anyway.

He watched me coming in.  He figured I had to be listening to my radio man
as I was heading right for the middle of the clearing.  He got a bit
suspicious when I didn't flare when he would have flared me.  And he was
pretty sure I didn't have radios when he saw the spray of dirt and the
line of grass being mowed down as I body surfed through the clearing on my
chest.

I came up spitting dirt and swearing a lot.  I had gotten a bit scraped up
but nothing too bad.  My buddy and I picked up our gear and headed for the
road.  A woman had stopped to watch our landing and so she offered to give
us a lift back to the DZ.  On our way back, a swarm of paniced skydivers
came running along and we stopped and let them know I was OK.  We had to
send someone out looking for my radio man who was still wandering around
in the woods trying to talk to me on his radio.  We eventually got
everyone back to the DZ and it was beer o'clock anyway so we called it a
day.

When I explained what had happened, hearing the crickets screaming and
all, we all said that I should have flared when I heard the crickets.  It
was a big joke, and we all laughed.  However, a year later that joke would
come in very handy indeed.

Flare when you hear the crickets.   REALLY!